Refrigerators serve to store food items such as meat, fish, vegetable, fruit, beverage, etc. in a fresh state.
Generally, a refrigerator includes a refrigerator body having storage spaces such as a freezing chamber, a cooling chamber, a vegetable chamber, etc., a refrigeration cycle apparatus provided in the refrigerator body for maintaining the storage spaces at a pre-set temperature, and a door provided at one side of the refrigerator body for opening/closing the storage spaces.
Typically, the refrigerator has the freezing chamber disposed at an upper portion of the refrigerator body and the cooling chamber disposed at a lower portion thereof. But, recently, various types of refrigerator have been developed and made available to satisfy customers' needs for multi-functional and large-sized refrigerators.
For example, the available refrigerators include a type wherein the freezing chamber and the cooling chamber are disposed side by side, a type wherein the freezing chamber is disposed below the cooling chamber, and so on.
And, as the refrigerators have become multi-functional, various types of refrigerators are being made available equipped with an ice maker for making ice and an ice bank for storing the ice made by the ice maker in the storage space.
However, the ice bank for the refrigerator is fabricated to have a constant interior capacity so that the largest amount of ice that can be stored therein is limited.
Accordingly, the ice bank for the refrigerator may have problems as follows.
First, even though a storage amount of ice desired by the user is varied depending on the season or environment, the amount of ice that can be stored in the ice bank is fixed. Accordingly, it may be difficult to properly tailor to the customer's needs, thereby causing dissatisfaction.
Second, even when the customer needs a small amount of stored ice, the ice bank occupies the storage space of the refrigerator with a constant size, and accordingly, the storage space of the refrigerator may become unnecessarily small.
Third, even when the customer needs a small amount of stored ice, the amount of ice stored in the ice bank is constant, and accordingly, excess ice is stored in the ice bank for a long time, thereby deteriorating the ice.